Wednesday, October 7, 2015

For All The Squeakers I've Loved Before (Myself Included)

In October 2014, I ran the St George Marathon and managed a BQ time of -2:46 under my age group standard. Naively, I thought this would, easily be enough. Fast forward nearly a year later and I was sweating bullets watching various predictions of anywhere from 90 seconds to 3+ minutes. I made the 2016 cut with 18 seconds to spare, but I realize now that I probably should not have felt so secure with my 2:46 cushion.

This fantastically smart runner decided she would compile the data of 2014 and 2015 to come to some kind of prediction of the 2016 cut off:

http://boston-qualifier-stats.blogspot.com/

For 2017, she has stated she will not do the compilation again, so I want to carry on the torch.

I'm a software developer by trade with a degree in Operations Research (a branch of study related to Industrial Engineering). At the very least, I have the skills to pull in and process data, and query that data in a bunch of different ways for the sake of comparison and prediction.

I hope that I can do half as good a job as she did and can keep up with the demand of processing/compiling/posting. I will do my best.

This week (today or tomorrow) I will post the 2014/2015 St George Marathon comparison. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the Berlin Marathon 2015 results do not have all the age group data (nor does it include the ages of participants). I loaded up the 2014 results, but will have to wait for 2015 results to be complete.